


Ain't No DJ Gonna Save My Soul

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blanket Permission, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-02-01 03:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21363319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Party Poison had an interesting Halloween - he wasn’t expecting to die on Halloween, and he wasn’t expecting to meet someone oh-so-much worse than the Phoenix Witch.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36





	Ain't No DJ Gonna Save My Soul

Halloween night was a special night, out in the Zones. 

It was a night to celebrate, it was a night to stoke the campfires until the flames danced with the stars, it was a night to honor your dead.

Children dressed in whatever colorful costumes they scavenged, patched leather and neon designs on t-shirts four times too big for them; their faces painted in a dark contrast, a ghost in green and black and white with glitter over the smeared white facepaint. 

Party Poison never liked Halloween night. It felt like trouble to him; the protectors, the Gods, of the Zones were too busy mingling with the living and their living compatriots to watch over those who found themselves in a slump on Halloween. 

And since it felt like trouble, there was trouble. 

Poison was on a solo run. Back to the Diner for some gifts they’d gotten their friends, back to the Nest. Simple, right?

But the night, ever so slightly darker and ever so slightly more menacing, offered its own challenge to him.

He didn’t remember much.

He remembered slamming on his brakes as stark white headlights came into view, his own illuminating the pure white paint job of the vehicle. Dracs, he remembered thinking.

So he got his ray gun out, as he did for every firefight, and watched as blazing light from his ray gun lit the air around him and hit one, two, three Dracs.

Watched as a light beam singed his hair as it whipped past his ear.

Four, five, six Dracs fallen to the ground, a fatalistic hit from the business end of Poison’s ray gun. There were only a few more, he thought, I got this.

Time seemed to slow down, Poison’s eyes widening as he watched a ray gun blast, closer, closer, closer - and hit him straight in the heart. 

There was a burn - an excruciating burn that filled his entire body, heart burning, burning, burning -, but it left as soon as it came. In its place came blindness; he couldn’t see a thing. But Poison didn’t panic.

And then he was cold.

He was cold, extremely cold. Poison tried to pull his signature blue leather jacket closer around his shoulders, knowing it wouldn’t help him warm up but wanting the comfort anyway. He realized he wasn’t wearing his jacket.

He should’ve panicked. The idle thought passed his mind, but no matter how much he willed either his mind or his body to oblige, he wasn’t panicking. He was calm; his hands weren’t shaking, his leg wasn’t tapping, he wasn’t blinding too much and his breathing was steady and even. 

“I’m dead,” Poison said aloud, the realization dawning on him. His calm never left.

It was...a supernatural calm. He wasn’t this calm. He couldn’t be. He had never been this calm in his life. It was unnatural and he sure as Hell knew that it wasn’t any fancy new BLI drug; they never did this to him.

He wasn’t blind, either. He wasn’t blind, but the inky black around him was what being in the afterlife was, apparently. 

Looking down, he couldn’t see his body, but he could feel it, could feel his fingertips even though he couldn’t see them, even an inch away from his eye. He couldn’t see his signature blood red hair on the edge of his vision. It unsettled Poison more than he’d like to admit.

When Poison blinked - then he could see his hair. Except it was...it was...There was something off, because it was like the dye was dripping off his hair, dripping like blood and sliding down the sides of his face, the dye sticky and - and burning hot. 

He tried to wipe it away, it was burning, burning, burning, but he tried to wipe it away and suddenly he could see his hands, they were burning too with the blood red dye slipping between his fingers and falling, falling, falling but fading, fading, turning ink black like his surroundings.

The burn faded, but it was replaced quickly by a cold that burned nearly as much. His body was shaking, he knew it, he knew his hands were shaking but he couldn’t feel it even as he covered his ears with his hands and tried his damnedest to put as much pressure on it as he could - but he couldn’t feel it. Shouldn’t he feel it?

“You are panicked.”

Poison’s eyes snapped up, searching through the blackness and the red around, wild, feral, confused, scared. 

He found nothing. The voice he’d heard was...it was nothing. It was nothing, it wasn’t masculine or feminine, it wasn’t young or old, it wasn’t joyous or solemn, it wasn’t raspy or clear. Poison couldn’t describe it right, it really was nothing - it slipped through his head like sand, he tried his best to pick out characteristics but the sound faded from his memory though the words burned into his head. 

“I am,” Poison said evenly, evenly as he could to hide the tremble in his voice. He wasn’t going to lie, not in death. It wasn’t a good idea to piss off an entire afterlife, he thought. He was going it wasn’t as boring as this. 

“You are dead. You know this.”

“I do.” Answering as simply as he could seemed like the best option, but was there a best option? He was dead and being sarcastic was...well, it was useless. Out loud, at least. His thoughts were another thing entirely. 

The voice hummed. There was still nothing to it. “I am Death. Nice to meet you, Party Poison.”

Tension filled Poison’s body - though he still couldn’t see his body. His posture straightened and he felt the cold leather of his jacket adjust with his shoulders, which made his mind relax but had no effect on his body. “So? This is death? Can’t see anything - it’s a little bleak, isn’t it?”

The voice laughed. “Let me explain my terms to you. You are arrogant, aren’t you?”

Poison bared his teeth. Now he knew who he was talking to. Now he knew what was going on, which helped some of his panic subside; not much, though. “I might be. What does it matter?”

“Your deity, the Phoenix Witch, she usually takes you to the afterlife.” It was not a question. It was a statement. “She usually takes you to me. She is, however, unavailable tonight -”

“Halloween…” Poison whispered, looking up to search for the source of the voice he wouldn’t find. 

“Do not interrupt me.” This time, the voice was not nothing - there was a coldness to it, that sent a chill down Poison’s spine. He got the message. “I am left to bring forth the souls of the dead for a challenge. Your Witch sees the future of life; I, however, see only death. I am left to see if you deserve to live, despite her Knowing your fate.”

“So you don’t know whether I’m important or not. Got it. What’s your challenge, Mr. Death Sir?” Poison rolled his eyes. He knew it wasn’t a good idea - but at the same time, could it be so difficult..? What could Death do, if Death didn’t know whether Poison was important or not?

“Walk past me.”

Poison almost laughed, but refrained. Walk past Death? Cool, he just had to keep walking until he found a way out of this inky black, and he couldn’t quite feel anything that wasn’t hot or cold, so it couldn't be too difficult, right?

And then Death showed itself.

Poison couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think of anything beyond the phantom feeling of hands around his throat that appeared at the same time as Death showed itself. 

Hands were wrapped around his throat, constricting his airways, tightening more and more until he could feel the blood dripping down his neck from scars he couldn’t see, couldn’t feel.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. 

The worst of it wasn’t that he couldn’t breath, that his lungs were screaming for air that he couldn’t give and was trying to cry out for, scream out for. It was Death itself. 

Death itself was standing on the same platform of inky black that Poison was, lifeless, more like a ruined doll itself hanging than Death.

Death had the same blood red hair as Poison. It was dripping down his shoulders, the dye - the blood -, gushing, gushing. Its eyes were hollow and sunken, as black as the surroundings, blood falling into them. It didn’t fade to black, though, it puddled up, and then the black swallowed it, as if the black platform they were standing on was quicksand.

Poison couldn’t tear his eyes away from Death’s face. He couldn’t breath; he couldn’t scream. Even as the hands pressed tighter, tighter, even as Death grinned, the familiar cocky grin Poison saw in the mirror every day, but with rotten teeth and skin pulled so tight it was like cracking leather.

“I said, walk past me,” Death repeated, but its voice was no longer cold or undescribable. It was Poison’s voice, right down to the emphasis on the syllables in ‘walk’ and the drawl on ‘said’. Not just his voice, but his speech patterns, too.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t! Poison thought struggling to keep his thoughts coherent. How could he walk past...past that when he couldn’t even breathe?

When he couldn’t even walk he realized with mortification as his feet, too, like the dye, began to seep into the black despite his lack of vision. 

How could he walk like Death? How could he be so arrogant as to his own abilities? How could he walk past something so...grotesque? 

Something so much like him, left to rot and left dead at the hands of - at the hands of everyone, dead in a thousand different ways.

The most prominent was its neck. Poison momentarily forgot about the pressure on his neck as he stared at Death’s neck, brought his hands to his own crescent moon-shaped scars on his neck in a morbid curiosity, a mirror image. 

There was no blood on them as he pulled his hand back, even the feathery touch he gave himself making him flinch. 

But...wasn’t there blood earlier?

And weren’t there hands around his throat?

The constriction in his throat immediately came back to mind, and Poison gave a strangled gasp - he couldn’t have the air to gasp, shouldn’t be able to make the sound even if he did because of the hands covering his vocal cords?

Poison was dead, though. He was dead. He didn’t need air, did he?

The panic left his system. The invisible hands around his throat disappeared, touch fading so quickly Poison barely registered it left and couldn’t recall the way they’d felt around his throat. 

Poison spit onto the ground, leveling his eyes with the sunken ones of Death. And took a step forward. 

Death made no movement, still nothing more than a lifeless figure. The rest of Death’s body came into focus. Poison couldn’t recall that he hadn’t been able to see it earlier, so focused on Death’s mirrored face.

It was not lifeless.

In fact, it was like the living dead, ironically enough. Death’s ribs showed, the skin completely disintegrated in some places - its lungs shriveled up, crumpled almost like paper, dribbling sand. Slowly at first, slowly, and then pouring, pouring over dried bones and sticking to wet bloody skin and sinking into the black as it met the ground.

He swallowed his bile. Now was not the time. He took another step.

Poison saw his own jacket fade into his sight, loosely around Death’s shoulders, beat-up and ratty but all the comfort usually found in the broken-in leather lost to him as he watched the bottom hem of the jacket begin to burn, slowly, slowly.

The jacket that had kept him and his brother from freezing for a year. The jacket that defined his identity, burning away.

Another step.

Death had nothing more to offer. 

Poison stared it down, snarling, taking one last moment to to touch the scars on his neck. He was more than the scars he held, the memories that trapped him.

He was Party fuckin’ Poison. And killjoys never die. 

Another step. And another. And another, even as his feet began to work against him, sticking to the blackness, making it harder and harder to pick up his feet and take another step.

He made eye contact with Death the entire time, the rotting version of him with nothing left to live for. Nothing left to die for. 

When Poison dragged his feet through the tar-like ground far enough to stand next to death, he clenched his fists - and closed his eyes. He was not lifeless. He was alive, and he would stay that way.

Without opening his eyes, he took the last step.

And woke up on the ground, stars shining down on him with a knowing twinkle, his jacket snug around his shoulders and not a trace of the firefight that had taken place/

Clumsily standing up, brushing sand off his clothes, Poison had to laugh - killjoys never really died, huh? The other three were in for one Halloween story...

**Author's Note:**

> Oops. Thoughts? Comments are always appreciated! Thanks for reading :)


End file.
